The N.B.A.’s Great Impersonator

Watch closely next time LeBron James steps on the court for the Cleveland Cavaliers. You’ll see not only the usual flurry of quantifiable activity—points, rebounds, assists, improbable trailing blocks in finely timed bunches—but also those motions and habits that make James memorable as a personality as well as a player. After he dribbles across the half-court line, his eyes move in rapid darts, from teammate to cutting teammate, attempting to memorize—or, more likely, to determine—the patterns of their movement. Sometimes he points to a spot on the floor or shoos someone away from another. “Go left; not there; almost; so close,” he seems to be thinking. When he doesn’t have the ball, he chews his nails and fidgets with the edges of his jersey. He jogs as if to a martial snare.

These minutiae, unhindered by the pads and helmets that, in hockey or football, would hide them, add up to a style—and the visibility of such styles has much to do with the N.B.A.’s continually advancing popularity, especially with kids, who love to imitate the tics of their heroes. To notice them is to renew our understanding of the game. How better to qualify LeBron’s virtuosic control than as slightly neurotic?

Brandon Armstrong, a former player in the N.B.A.’s Development League, has steered his athleticism toward a second career, as a hilariously gifted physical comedian. His impersonations of N.B.A. players—usually shared on YouTube, now captured by The New Yorker’s video team—are replete with revelatory noticings, and not only with respect to LeBron. He conveys James Harden’s goofy insouciance; Steph Curry’s wholesome arrogance; Russell Westbrook’s restless intensity; and Carmelo Anthony’s mix of skilled footwork and total fatigue. Slyly, too, he points out the creativity with which almost all of these men—some of the game’s very best players—manage to break the basic rules of basketball. Armstrong’s videos have been viewed millions of times, and have won him a cult following not only on YouTube but also on Twitter and Instagram; the former N.B.A. player Baron Davis will star alongside Armstrong in the pilot for a scripted series. More impressively, he reminds us that sports are more than stats, that many of their greatest pleasures are little more than gestures.